


Glass

by TheCinematicRevealThatBatmanIsDead



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Suicide, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-27
Updated: 2017-01-27
Packaged: 2018-09-20 07:48:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9481625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCinematicRevealThatBatmanIsDead/pseuds/TheCinematicRevealThatBatmanIsDead
Summary: "You humans are so delicate, like glass. Especially your hearts"-Kaworu Nagisa





	

The last angel is dead.

A girl who was my friend is dead, replaced with a perfect wax statue.

The rest of the wax statues are dead.

Asuka Langley Soryu is laid up in a hospital. She tried to kill herself, which is pathetic, and failed, which is even more so.

I am alive, and that is more pathetic than I can fathom.

 

II

 

Once, a lifetime ago, she kissed me. She kissed a wax statue of me, one that stood there, frightened and numb and unable to breathe. And she hated it.

Asuka. I hear her name and images run through my brain, like a VHS on fast forward, small snippets of life. She twirls her hair at a thousand miles per hour, she writes her name on the chalkboard in record time. She cries in her sleep for a nanosecond. She sprints through a red-lit void, through door after door after door and only pauses for a moment when she sees her mother hanging from the ceiling. I hit STOP and she’s frozen like that, a child, smiling without joy because her childhood is over. Her face is like a broken mirror. Her glee, her relief, you can still see their warped images, torn and multiplied by the scars that trace the glassy surface of her face. Then the glass tumbles to the floor and she is Empty.

 

III

 

Something’s wrong with me, and in my mind’s eye, it’s physical. Shards of a broken mirror in my brain and in my heart. Why else would I shrink back and the thought of asking Misato to hold me, asking Asuka to be honest with me, asking Rei to look at me? These women in my life were unreal. They were like ghosts, illusions of perfect beauty that would rip at my flesh if I let them, if I took their bait, if I became vulnerable in their presence.

But I am vulnerable. I am a glass vase, containing nothing, transparent and pathetically fragile. Fated to shatter at the slightest touch.

I crave that touch.

 

I

 

Her wrists are strong, and the strength curls up through her palms and into her delicate fingers. She twists the rag and the water forms a glassy curtain that catches a ray of sunlight floating in from outside and there is my mother. Somewhere in this painting is my mother, hidden in the tension in her wrists or the golden-white light of the sun.

And the moon.

And the Earth.

And now her hands, or hands that look like hers grip a pair of glasses that belong to my father. She sees her reflection, or a reflection that looks like her, and wonders what she missed. Wonders if she will be missed.

The First Child is dead, again.

It hurts. It hurts us all.

 

II

 

She places her shoes by the door. The floorboards have melded with the dirt and clay. The Earth is in the process of swallowing this little cabin. Sunlight pokes through a hole in the tin roof, and an overgrown banana tree intrudes further and further with each passing year.

She’s one hundred and one pounds, probably less, but the floor still struggles; she can hear it groaning beneath her, threatening to give and let the Earth swallow her and the cabin whole. She steps lightly to avoid a protruding nail.

Here it is. An empty clawfoot tub, grey with grime along the sides but she doesn’t care. She’s exhausted.

Zero percent. Unit-02 was everything to her and now she’s gone. Despondent and useless, like her.

Asuka loosens her tie and unzips her blouse, letting it and the skirt drop to the floor. She turns on the shower and, miraculously, water escapes from the gunmetal-grey showerhead and begins to fill the tub, bringing with it the acrid smell of sulfur.

She hates the way her bra feels, because it’s not her bra but Misato’s, Misato the whore, Misato the mother who was only a mother to Shinji, Shinji the son of a bitch that won’t hold her. Asuka knew, could _feel_ that she was not welcome in that house. She unhooks the thing, a baby-blue nightmare adorned with little arabesque swirls of thread, and tosses it aside.

The tub is full now, and when she turns off the water, she can see her reflection in it. She looks at her body, her small breasts, her bony hips, her ribs, three, four, five of which she can see clearly through her skin, just on one side, and at her face, her sunken eyes and sunburnt cheeks. She holds her arms, palms up, just above her shoulders and she’s reminded suddenly of a painting she saw on a trip to America. She finishes getting undressed and folds her clothes very neatly, very carefully, and places them on chair next to the tub.

She sleeps. She dreams. She wakes up and reaches into the pocket of her school uniform. With trembling fingers, she draws out a red box cutter and wonders vaguely if crazy people are still crazy after they die.

 

V

 

My love and my hate are indistinguishable.

 

I killed him, and now I am Empty again.

 

III

 

I hate myself. I’m afraid of other people. I did something terrible to Asuka, and in my heart I knew it was wrong but I was frozen, I was boiling, I was overcome with love and hate and it was just a way to fuck her without being able to hold her. I’m sick. I’m pathetic and cowardly.

I’m on the edge now, looking over and seeing how little it would take to make me fall, to make me shatter.

I can see my image in the glassy surface of the lake. I break its stillness when I wade into the cool water, like a cat that slinks off into the woods to find a nice place to die.

  


**Author's Note:**

> The painting mentioned in the story is _Ad Astra_ by Finnish painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela. It is on display at the Art Institute of Chicago. [Take a look.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Gallen_Kallela_Ad_astra.jpg)


End file.
